Inductees

In the late 1980s, Marty Kilgore was exploring a career change. His dad was a builder and his brother was a structural engineer. He had experience in construction and was working in the car business as a finance manager.

“I went to my dad and told him I just wasn’t really that happy,” Kilgore said. “He asked me what I that I might like to do in life, and I just kept coming back to the baseball side of it. I knew I was too old to go back to playing, but I told him I love to coach. He told me I wasn’t too old to make a change, and he’d support me any way he could.”

So Kilgore made the change, much to the future benefit of Metropolitan Community College. He worked for the MCC baseball program from 1989 until 2023, helping guide the team to NJCAA World Series appearances in 1993 and 1998. He became head coach in 1999.

It was quite a career and why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame proudly inducted Kilgore with the Class of 2025.

Kilgore earned Region XVI Coach of the Year eight times and finished well north of 600 victories. His teams qualified for the NJCAA postseason 10 times (in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2009, 2013, 2016). And he did it on a part-time salary, even though he also took care of the field, and worked other jobs such as a limo driver, helped in rec leagues and construction sites. MCC made him full-time in 2004.

“I’m very thankful for the opportunity,” he said. “For me, success was always about the players and their success. And it wasn’t just the success there at Maple Woods, but what they went on to do after they left. What they did with the rest of their lives.”

Kilgore attended Kansas City’s East High School before graduating from St. Mary’s High School in Independence in 1977. He played in the Ban Johnson League and Casey Stengel League before pitching for MCC-Longview and Iowa State University, where he began to think of coaching as a career.

“I played for Larry Corrigan at Iowa State and took a baseball class from him while I was there,” Kilgore said. “Larry played for the Dodgers organization, and we were taught everything the Dodgers way. He reiterated, fundamentally, every aspect of baseball, and that had a big impact. I walked away from there with a lot of knowledge of the game.”

For most junior college coaches, one clear measurement of success is the number of players who reached professional baseball and, in particular, the big leagues. Maple Woods alums include slugger Albert Pujols, Randy Ruiz, Logan Morrison and Ashton Goudeau.

While Kilgore played a big role, he defers credit.

“That goes back to Cris Mihlfeld,” he said. “I owe a lot to Chris. From ’94 to ’98, we developed the process. He taught me about winning, about how to prepare a team. That’s when I learned a lot about strength and conditioning and nutrition, and a lot about psychological side of baseball.”

The two worked well together and, when Kilgore took over as head coach, he learned to trust his assistants in the same way.

“He took a job, and I became head coach, and during that time I really leaned on my assistant coaches,” Kilgore said. “I didn’t necessarily have a mentor. I was really close with my assistants and trusted them to help me along the way.

“And on the personal side, my wife (Kristin) was always my best friend and provided me with emotional support during the coaching days,” said Kilgore, and they have a daughter, Chloe. “She was always there for me, and I leaned on her.”

Kilgore also has long given back, with a golf tournament fundraiser for the entire athletic department. It provides resources for education and experiences that support college athletes. He also manages MCC’s Sports Training Center, an indoor facility for baseball and softball.

Kilgore said part of his longevity can be attributed to being able to make changes when the times call for them, whether that was spurred by things inside the game of baseball or outside.

“A lot of the changes I saw were societal,” he said. “It got to the point where you couldn’t coach the same way in 2018 as you did in 1998. And that’s just part of life. You make adjustments. You keep up with the times or they’ll pass you by.”